News About Kids' Migraines

Three recent Reuters news reports for Medscape caught my eye because they add to the growing base of knowledge about migraines in children. If you're surprised to hear that kids have migraines, please see my previous article on that topic.

A study of 513 ten-year-old children in Finland found that 10% of them had migraines. Most of the migraineurs had a family history of it. That finding was expected. The interesting and more unexpected factor is that those young migraine sufferers on average have more problems at home than other kids. The problems are primarily poor living conditions and unhappy relationships between family members, which may be linked to the fact that they are more likely to have a family member with chronic disease.

File the next one in the "I Told You So" file. A study was conducted in the U.S. of 1,932 kids between 12 and 17 years of age who had been treated for severe migraine at one of 35 participating clinics. Results showed that more of their migraines occurred at the beginning of the week. Several things may account for this, including some sort of stress related to going to school and/or a change in sleeping and eating habits at the beginning of the school week.

Very few of the migraines happened on Saturdays, and 73% of the kids in the study had their migraines between 6 am and 6 pm. Now the Palm Beach Headache Center in West Palm Beach, FL, is studying the pattern of migraines in adolescents during the summer vacation. What do you want to bet they'll find that kids who don't go to summer school or have a summer job are less prone to migraines during vacation?

Lastly, the Pediatric Headache Center at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation has reported good tolerance and effectiveness in treatment with nasal sumatriptan in migraineurs 12 to 17 years of age. Although Dr. A. David Rothner noted that the FDA has not yet approved this drug for patients under 18 years old, the results of their study indicate that it is safe in kids who don't respond to over-the-counter medications.

The study included 518 kids with migraine. It also showed that early treatment is more effective. The kids' major complaint was bad taste, but more than 70% of them had relief of their headaches, and only 12-15% had recurrence.

I think the message in the first two studies is that parents of adolescent migraineurs need to pay attention to when their kids are getting headaches. If there is an early week pattern, they can try to discern whether issues at school or home are contributing to their kids' suffering.

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